Entrepreneurs : Buzz

One could call the 2011 class of Crain's "20 in their 20s" list up-and-comers, but we here at Model D would argue that they're already here. The list celebrates Metro Detroiters who may not have made a mint, but are giving this region something back through their hard work, dedication and entrepreneurial spirit. A special shout-out goes to our Crain's award winners with bigtime Detroit proper connections; among them Hostel Detroit's Emily Doerr, the Imagination Station's Jerry Paffendorf (who's quoted below), Amy Ruby of the Detroit Derby Girls and Jason Malone, who founded the Midnight Golf Program.

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"I think people want opportunities to engage with the city, and they're not offered them," he said. "I think people respond to something like that. ... One of the things we realized with our work, there are many, many things you can do in the world and it's very difficult to get people excited about them. ... You've got to present these things in such a way that they're fun and inviting; not to make light of problems, but there's a way to present things and be open for business that doesn't just focus on the dark parts."

Check the list out here.

North Carolina's Research Triangle is often described in national media as a triumph of large entities coming together to create a haven for educators and innovators. But the area's News & Observer writers note, as Durham announced a new initiative through the Blackstone Entrepreneurs Network that will provide $3.6 million in targeted technical support to the region's growing entrepreneurial community, the Triangle would be wise to look to Midtown Detroit for guidance.

Midtown's "bold, comprehensive" plan, anchored by public and private entities, is now becoming a model for regions around the nation hoping to kick-start their market for high-tech jobs.

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The investments in turn are part of the Kresge Foundation's nine-part strategy to revitalize the city, ranging from fixing the city's education system and reforming health care to driving sustainability and creativity as signatures of the new economy. This comprehensive approach is also present in the mayor's Detroit Works Project and its ambitious agenda to responsibly restore, build out, and connect its most vibrant neighborhoods while connecting it with the broader region. Detroit's future is far from certain. But its all-hands on deck, well-capitalized, comprehensive approach to entrepreneurial growth is instructive.

Find out more about what North Carolina thinks we're doing right here.

Detroit isn't the only industrial city challenged with remaking its identity. On the other side of the pond, Polish city Lodz was once the European leader in textile production -- until the fall of the USSR, when the city suffered massive depopulation. Now, Lodz joins Detroit as a city full of empty factories -- and even more potential.

Detroit Lives! wants to talk to urban planners, entrepreneurs and artists from both cities to jump-start the conversation on how former industrial giants can reshape themselves. Their Kickstarter won't fund their plane tickets (they already have those), but it will help pay for things like post-audio engineering, translation services and film festival fees.

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We've lined up interviews on both continents with top city officials, best-selling authors, and pioneering artists.  PLUS, the American Film Festival in Poland has already expressed interest in premiering the film (and we haven't even begun shooting)!

Wanna fund, or find out more? Click here.

What do longtime activist and casino investor Jane Garcia, state representative Rashida Tlaib, and Slow's BBQ have in common? They are just a few of the honorees of this year's Community Investment Breakfast, sponsored by Southwest Detroit Business Association. The event, themed "The Detroit of the Future: Built One Community at a Time," will be emceed by Fox 2's Huel Perkins, and feature remarks from Dave Bing and Henry Ford Hospital's Dr. John Popovich. Belda Garza, The Ideal Group's Frank Venegas and the City of Detroit's Brad Dick will also be recognized for their leadership and support of the Southwest community.

The event will be held at The Display Group, located at 1700 West Fort Street. Tickets are $50. Visit the SDBA website to learn more, or click here to purchase tickets.

Maybe Silicon Valley or Boston seem more plausible, but editor-in-chief Robert Buderi writes, if he could, he'd buy stock in Detroit. And while the city isn't yet a commodity on the NYSE, he put his money where his mouth is: launching Xconomy Detroit, with the aid of the Kaufmann Foundation, to chronicle the city's entrepreneurial adventures and helping connect Michigan's thinkers with the rest of the country.

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We made trips to get to know the innovation community, hired a correspondent, formed a network of about 20 top advisors (called Xconomists), and launched last April 20. In early December, we held our first event--a networking evening to thank all those who have helped us get started in Michigan. And our first public event, which I will be coming out for, is coming up at TechTown on April 14. It is called Michigan 2031, and we have assembled an all-star cast from a variety of sectors to brainstorm about what Michigan's innovation scene will look like in 20 years--and how/where it can attain positions of national and world leadership in key sectors.

Find out more here.

Model D captain Walter Wasacz's vision of Detroit is sent to your online mailbox every Tuesday. He got the chance to elaborate on Detroit's development from the ground up during a recent broadcast of WJR's "Destination 313" radio show, hosted by Paul W. Smith and Quicken Loans VP Stephen Luigi Piazza.

Managing editor Wasacz joined a group of movers and shakers from many different worlds in Detroit, including President and CEO of Olympia Entertainment Tom Wilson, Friar Ray Stadmeyer from the On The Rise bakery, and Blue Cross Blue Shield VP Tricia Keith.

Not to stroke our ego, but Luigi Piazza tossed us some rather high praise.

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I really believe in the Model D magazine. It's a lot of feet-on-the-street stories, the stories that, again, Paul says don't get covered: the smaller stories. We had Tom Wilson on, and he was talking about the young kids that really and truly talk about all the different communities that are being established, all the different little restaurants that are there, the things that you can do in the city, that, at 70 miles an hour, we don't see driving around the expressway. You cover that, right on the street, down to the nitty-gritty.

Find out more about the show and listen to the podcast here.

What do family-owned radio stations, the MC5 or concert crowds have to do with opening a technology biz? In an industry where creativity is king, professor Jason Schmitt writes that the next Silicon Valley start-ups or multinational software corporations could take a lesson from Detroit rock, which has maintained sell-out crowds and a gritty edge from one century to the next. Schmitt studied the Detroit music ecosystem for the better part of a decade and says our city, more than any other region, has maintained steady creative output and rightly earned the nation's fascination. Hey, Google -- if you want a lesson in maintaining relevance and credibility, listen up.

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Most new tech firms are hardly a blip on the longitudinal timeline of creative success. Inversely, Detroit rock music has employed and cultivated a solid stream of creative talent and cultural relevancy for six decades and running. In other words, the talent and creativity of this region continually replicates and maintains its inertia. Sure, other music regions have had 'flash in the pan' success and lots of correlating hits: a la Seattle. But the Detroit case is different. More complex. Continually creating without drying up -- and allowing creativity to flourish in opposition to the regional economic imperatives.

Rock on. Read the whole thing here.

Hidden within a once-abandoned Eastern Market warehouse, a group of 20 techies, inventors and artists have assembled a DIY playhouse of future inventions, known around the city as OmniCorp Detroit. The Detroit News peeks inside this collaborative studio, part of a growing nationwide movement, where innovators are taking things apart, dreaming new designs and sharing their knowledge with other tinkerers around the D.

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"I was developing and gathering information to bring to Detroit," said Sturges, a former architecture student at the Cranbrook Academy of Art in Bloomfield Hills. He moved to Detroit in 2009, found like-minded creatives and set up shop in a 3,200-square-foot warehouse space on Division Street. The operation runs completely on monthly membership dues, and its members -- 20 and growing -- include recreational metalsmiths, professional electric engineers and computer programmers.

Hack the rest of the story here.

Set to open its doors in just a month, North Corktown's Hostel Detroit is the focus of a new video from WXYZ's Detroit 2020 project, which even got some viral love last week from Yahoo! News. HD board member (and Model D news editor) Ashley C. Woods was on hand to put "Detroit's welcome mat to the world" in the proper perspective.

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"We have one of the most dynamic music scenes in the entire world. We have phenomenal architecture. We have an amazing underground grass-roots art scene and there are people coming from all over the world because they're hearing about Detroit and they're sensing something new is here."

Check the video out here.

A column in USA Today highlighted Detroit entrepreneurs like Phil Cooley, I Am Young Detroit's Margarita Barry and Mental Note's Thahn Tran as examples of the city's welcoming environment for potential small business owners and former auto workers (backed up by a study from the Kaufmann Foundation, which found the rate of adult entrepreneurship doubled in Michigan from 2006 to 2009). While the low cost of living and growing openness to start-ups and short-term contracts certainly bear a mention, we at Buzz liked the nod to our creative energy and down-home loyalty best. Well done!

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And finally, unlike in some more cut-throat cities, those who haven't fled Detroit are eager to see risk-takers succeed -- even another restaurant on the same block. "We're desperate for companionship," Cooley jokes. People buy local when they can and create two-hour lines outside Slows in nice weather. A civic spirit of us-against-the-world has neighbors turning vacant lots into urban farms and sculpture parks, and building a bike track next to a burned-out house.

Read the rest of the story here.

The next challenge to fostering creative entrepreneurs involves creating a supply chain that connects artists and business owners to prototype engineers, manufacturers, textile producers and the like. Bringing all these agents together to build a sustainable creative economy in the Midwest is the subject at the Rust Belt to Artist Belt Conference III, a two-day meeting of regional minds that kicks off April 6 at the College for Creative Studies. Originally conceived by the Community Partnership of Arts and Culture in Cleveland, the diverse list of speakers includes local names like Jerry Paffendorf, Joel Peterson, Gina Reichert and Randal Charlton.

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Mid-west rust belt cities like Detroit are the perfect proving ground for this type of exploration, due to our creative culture, entrepreneurial commercial approach, and adaptable manufacturing base. To highlight this fact, the conference is looking for involvement from municipal leaders, neighborhood enthusiasts, community and economic development authorities and you! Please join us as we develop deeper strategies and discussions that will continue to cultivate and strengthen our creative ecosystem.

Early bird registration is available through March 21. Sign up or find out more here.

Detroit once had the dubious honor of being the nation's largest city without a comprehensive recycling program. Thanks to the efforts of Recycle Here's Matthew Naimi and Steve Haworth, Detroit's made great steps in reducing waste and green education. A new video, "Shifting Gears: Going Green in the Motor City," follows Naimi and Haworth's newest venture, Green Safe Products, which provides recyclable and compostable cups, plates, cutlery and more to area restaurants like Avalon International Breads, the Woodbridge Pub and Mudgie's. And as many local restaurant owners point out, using environmentally-friendly products like Green Safe doesn't just make good green sense -- it's good business sense and marketing, too.

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"It's a great example of how zero waste can work really, really well, not only for the environment, but for the economy as well. It's all just part of giving back and being sustainable, which is a huge thing in Detroit right now."

Watch and learn here.

Josh Linkner launched his fifth company, the venture capital firm Detroit Venture Partners. Along with business partners Dan Gilbert and Brian Hermelin, Josh is actively investing in early-stage technology companies looking to help rebuild the Detroit region through entrepreneurship.

The ePrize founder and chairman's new book, Disciplined Dreaming, a guide to fostering creativity in the workplace, recently hit #8 on the New York Times' business best seller list. Got a dream? We suggest you get in touch.

Check out the list here.

This gem of a link comes from Sandra Yu, program manager at Detroiters Working for Environmental Justice. An MIT grad who chose to return to Detroit (and couldn't be happier about the decision), Yu authored eight reasons why the Korean population of Michigan should embrace Detroit, and then turned to some of her friends for their say. The article's printed in Korean, but scroll down to read what Yu, Sean Mann, Sheu-Jane Gallagher, Leor Barak, and other city dwellers have to say about what this town's given back to them.

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Detroit is the ideal city for the immigrant spirit. A century ago, Detroit was 33% foreign-born, mostly immigrants from Europe and the Middle East. During the Great Migration that spanned 55 years from 1915 to 1970, 6 million African Americans fleeing brutal conditions in the South migrated to Northern cities like Detroit searching for a better life and a fair chance for themselves and their children. Now, immigrants from Latin America make up the only growing demographic in the City of Detroit, and have created one of the densest, most vibrant districts in the city. Detroit is not a city that is kind to the lazy, the selfish, or those who feel entitled. It is a city for the entrepreneurial, the creative, the hardworking, the determined. If you are adventurous, engaged and committed, there is a community in Detroit that will embrace you, make you one of their own and give you a say, whether you are an artist, an activist, a farmer, an inventor, or an entrepreneur.

Read this collection of quotes and thoughts on choosing Detroit here.

Picture this, if you can: a ten-foot high steel apparatus, loaded with industrial coke, shooting fire and embers like a volcano while rivers of molten steel, hot enough to melt an automobile, flow out and harden. Imagine shaping those two tons of scrap iron into a work of art.

That's the skill sculptor and furnace-builder Casey Westbrook's honed; the one he'll use to turn the statue of Robocop from an internet meme to a real, tactile work for the public to see, with only a Kevlar suit for safety. And while it isn't his largest display yet (that would be the 25-ton spectacular he produced for artist and exhibition-creator Matthew Barney's Cremaster cycle), this behind-the-scenes peek at the artistry behind Robocop might convince some Detroiters that there's more to this statue than Hollywood dazzle and science fiction imagination.

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Once two tons of molten scrap iron has collected in massive cylinders at the bottom of the furnace, the artist will unplug them like a vintner hammering the bung out of a cask, and the metal will gush directly into the mold. It's likely Robocop will be cast upside-down, his outstretched arms reaching for the ground as if to brace his mass against a fall. A day or two later, once he's cooled, they'll knock off the mold with hammers and chisels and the world's greatest cop will thunder to earth like Han after he was frozen in Carbonite.

Find out more here.